After many years of having a very colorful website, I’ve developed the need to shed all of that, at least for the time being. I’ve been taking up WAY too much of Ben’s time in the art and design department, and I figured it was about time I took this site in a much cleaner direction, where the content speaks for itself.

So, as you can see (or if you click over from the RSS feed, if you’re reading it there) the site is now entirely white. This will accomplish a few things:

1. The site will now be easier to navigate, as there is less clutter.
2. The things I post, such as recipes and photos, will not have to compete with the other design elements of the page.
3. The photography will “pop” more, which means I’d better get on the ball about improving it.
4. I won’t have to hassle Ben anymore when one of the really cool toys he implemented a few years ago inevitably breaks due to a WordPress or plugin update.

I’ve been wanting an all-white website for a while now, and since I’ve been home sick with this evil cold/flu/plague thing, it seemed like a good time to go for it.

So, my little beta-tasters, please click around the site and let me know if you see anything broken, missing, or otherwise amiss. I appreciate your help!

Hey everyone, I’m writing an article on what else there is to do to make money in online food content (beyond food blogging) and I need some help! I’ve put together this little survey that should only take about five minutes to complete. I’m trying to find out what areas people are willing to work with food folk online in a paid capacity.

Here’s the survey.

Please pass it around to any other people you know who love food. I need all the responses I can get to make the article as accurate as possible. Thanks!!

Hello lovely readers, I’m here to let you know that I’ve made a change to the way The Culinary Life serves up my posts via RSS. I’ve decided to leave Feedburner, a service that appears to be slowly going the way of the triceratops. Instead of waiting for the inevitable axe to fall, I’m moving now while I have time to work out the bugs without the misfortune of contending with hundreds of other people moving their feeds at the same time.

What does this mean to you? Your old feed URL, hosted by Feedburner, will soon be broken. What I need you to do is add the following URL to your feed readers and rss aggregators:

http://www.theculinarylife.com/feed/

All you need to do is go to your feed reader, add a new feed, and paste in the above link. It’s really easy. I promise! I’ll even help you out if you’re having trouble. Just leave a comment here if you’d like my assistance.

I’ve even got a shiny new email feed to go along with the transition; if you want to receive posts via email, you can do that by using the posts-by-email form:

Current email subscribers, you’re all set. Feedblitz has graciously moved you all over so that you don’t have to lift a finger. Isn’t that generous of them?

When my calendar popped up to remind me that today is the 5th birthday of this blog, I just about fell out of my chair. In so many ways, it doesn’t feel like it’s been five years, but in other ways I feel like I’ve gotten 20 years worth of experiences out of this little site, which I started on a whim while procrastinating in a UC Berkeley English class. I’ve made many incredible friends, spoken at some of the country’s best blogging and writing conferences, landed an amazing cookbook deal, and even done a complete site rebrand – complete with a new name. It’s been a wild ride.

I’ve come a long way in the past five years, and so has The Culinary Life/Wasabimon. I’m cringing just thinking about it, but if you take a look back at the archives from 2007, you’ll see that things were very different five years ago. Blogging was still new and very off the cuff for a lot of us. Over the years blogging has matured, and as a result, so has this site.

Thank you all for your love and support. Without my readers, I wouldn’t have enjoyed this ride nearly as much.

For me 2012 is going to be a year of growth, and a big part of the growth I hope to cultivate is better communication with others who love the same things I do. Namely, good food. That’s where you come in.

Lately I’ve been wondering how to communicate with my readers beyond this blog. While I’m really enjoying interacting with you all on Pinterest and Twitter, I want to share more than just pretty pictures and 140-character snippets. I want to share information, details, useful resources. You know, the meat and potatoes of life in the kitchen. And, the occasional narrative essay.

So, I’m excited to announce something I’ve been working on the past few weeks – [Read more...]